Designed to Sit Still

How classroom environment affects student behavior

Classroom layout and atmosphere may seem like afterthoughts, but experts say they can have strong effects on students' behavior and ability to learn effectively. Photo credit: Matt Disney/Epic News Network.

A teacher sits in a classroom while a nearby student drums on a desk. The teacher might reasonably be annoyed or view the student's behavior as disruptive and disrespectful.

Fast forward a few minutes. The student leans dangerously far back in a chair and then gets up to pace around the room. 

Again, the teacher's reaction might seem justifiable. But what if it were the wrong reaction based on asking the wrong questions?

“Behavior is communication always,” said Pam Vance, a retired special education teacher and the minister over BattleCreek Church’s special needs department, Haven.

Vance shared a similar example from one of her classes. However, instead of reprimanding the student for being a distraction, Vance recognized the restrictive seating was influencing his actions. She offered an alternative for him as a kinesthetic learner: someone who learns through hands-on activities such as movement or drawing.

She shifted his desk to the back of the room and told him he could stand, march around his desk or even get underneath it, as long as he didn't disturb the other students. 

"It made a huge difference. It was like an instantaneous thing," she said. 

Students speak out 

I conducted a survey of 17 students in grades seven through 12 from a range of educational settings (public school, early college, homeschool and private school) to examine how environmental factors affect focus, behavior and emotional regulation in academic settings.

When asked to describe their current classroom environment, a 12th grade student described scant attention to classroom organization. 

"Many are quite bright, very loud and at last somewhat awkwardly spaced," the student said. 

An eighth-grade respondent explained they often feel “drowning in [their] own thoughts of panic” in overstimulating classrooms. “The lights feel wrong, the teachers aren’t welcoming, the desks are too close together, and the walls often have too much stuff on them so the walls feel like they are closing in," the student reported. 

When discussing classroom lighting, one 11th grade respondent said they experience “headaches every day.” 

Respondents widely reported “zoning out” when feeling overwhelmed or restless in class. Many identified boredom and lack of engagement as major distraction drivers. 

Talking temperament

“Temperament is that biological factor we are all born with. It’s different between person to person, and really that's just our emotional reaction to our environment,” Debbie Deibert explained. Deibert is a professor and program coordinator for the Department of Child Development and Education at Tulsa Community College.

In a landmark, decades-long study of children's temperaments, researchers classified them as easy, difficult and slow to warm up. 

When Deibert taught preschool, she implemented comfortable chairs at the entrance of her classroom. This easily tailored the space to her slow-to-warm temperament students and their natural apprehensiveness. They needed an area that allowed them to observe the space before engagement. “It took me nothing to make those accommodations for those couple of students but it made all the difference for how they started their day in my classroom.”

What many people misunderstand about disruptive behavior in the classroom is assuming students intentionally act out. However, when viewed through a reactive lens, many students are simply responding to negative factors within their environment and don’t have proper self-regulation. 

Deibert expanded on the concept of difficult temperament. “People so often equate that with bad and it’s not bad; it's simply just that they have a nervous system that responds strongly to the environmental influences.” She noted that factors such as sudden schedule changes, unexpected visitors, sounds, smells or uncomfortable clothing can become overwhelming for these types of students. 

These sensitivities may become especially apparent in educational environments in response to lighting, color, noise, temperature, seating arrangements, classroom engagement and peer interactions.

Vance reflected on fluorescent lights and their initial purpose. “They were supposed to be, you know, marvelous. Well, they hum, and they blink. Those were not effective at all.” When she began to use lamps in her classroom, her students found them much more tolerable and enjoyable.

There are many ways to optimize lighting. Karla White, a senior interior designer at Beck Design in Tulsa, suggested indirect lighting as one possibility. Instead of using stark overhead fixtures, shifting a bulb toward a white wall can illuminate the space effectively and less intimidatingly. 

White and her design team often diverge from traditional lighting methods, instead incorporating creative and unconventional design elements tailored to each space. She referenced one project for the Oklahoma City Zoo Administration Building in which a mushroom was used as a light source, as well as another for a Bixby fire department where a light fixture was wrapped around a fire hose.

Educational spaces also can be designed to feel more engaging. 

If given the opportunity to design a classroom herself, Vance would prioritize adjustable lighting systems. “In Haven, we have lights that change the hue,” she said. “It goes to blue, to white, to yellow. All the lights have dimmer switches.” 

White emphasized the impact color has on student well-being. “Earth tones and blues" are calming, she said. "Reds are not great because they overstimulate.” 

Temperature can further contribute to classroom imbalance. Roughly half of the surveyed students identified temperature as a distracting factor. 

Researchers contend temperature must be intentional for a space or it hinders productivity. Classroom environments with uncomfortable temperatures or inadequate airflow may contribute to exhaustion, slower task completion and decreased concentration.

However, proper airflow and temperature regulation can become more difficult in crowded classrooms. 

Feeling overwhelmed 

Multiple surveyed students reported a desire for smaller class sizes and alternative seating dynamics. Distracted or off-task students often become a major source of classroom noise and stress for their peers. 

“I'm just overwhelmed because there is so much going on, especially when I am trying to do an assignment and no one else is doing it,” a seventh-grader said.

An 11th grade student stated, “When kids get bored, especially when they have ADHD, they find something else to stimulate their mind. This distracts everyone else in the room as well.”

Said another student: “I struggle with noise … my peers in later classes are extremely loud, with many people talking all at once and at different volumes about different topics."

Deibert suggested tangible and simple ways to aid students bothered by this. “You could allow them to put headphones on for class so they can tune out the noise. You can have them sit over in a corner where there aren't any visual distractions,” she said. “You’re not going to be able to individualize an environment for every single student in your classroom, but you can certainly be aware and have some allowances in place so that they can make those adjustments when they need them.”

“Our needs change daily and when we tell you we need something specific, we just want you to do everything in your power to make it happen,” said Natalie Hovis, an eighth-grader at Centennial Middle School in Broken Arrow. “We understand that you might not be able to make big changes, but all we ask is that you try your hardest.”

Paths to progress 

Deibert argued that accommodating different learning and regulation needs is often far more achievable than many educators assume. “You’ve got three kids with headphones on, and you’ve got five or six kids that are kind of on the edge or border because they just don’t want to see all the chaos or what’s going on, and then you’ve got ten or fifteen who are just in the middle doing what they’re doing; I’ve never understood why that would be a problem. If all of them are accomplishing the objectives of the day, if all of them are addressing the learning you have provided to them but they’re just doing it in a separate way, why on Earth would that matter?”

A bothersome environment can be amenable to a creative solution. “The classroom is everything, but really it's the adult in the classroom that is the strongest driver," Deibert said. 

What would an ideal learning environment look like? 

One 12th grader suggested “a small classroom size with break-out sessions throughout the class time to work on assignments and get personal help from the teacher.” 

But class-size reductions are expensive and are something education leaders have suggested for years. 

Hovis described a preference for a calmer sensory environment, saying, “Only lamps, relaxing music — only instruments — group activities or being allowed to talk or even whisper.”

Another eighth grader called for “a lower-lighting, quiet room that offers some class discussions/interactivity and independent time.”

An 11th grader noted that “flexible seating, including the floor as an option,” along with dimmable lights, blankets and smaller class sizes, would be ideal.

Ultimately, many students seemed less concerned with creating a perfect classroom and more concerned with having environments that can adapt to needs and learning styles.

“But we have policies and a system that doesn't really support compassion for children or teachers,” Deibert said.

Deibert explained that effective learning environments begin with well-trained educators who understand their subject matter and students' developmental needs.

“You can present information visually, you can talk about it. It’s also in your textbooks, so you access this information in a way that makes sense to you,” she said. She added that flexible classroom structures can support different learning preferences simultaneously. 

“When you make the environment as conducive to everybody as you can, everybody's gonna do well," Vance concurred.